In a world gone mad with war, spiralling economies and rightwing climate change deniers, we bring you what everyone needs right now: photographs of bears.
Along with a note that though their mere presence makes us feel delight, they are too in danger of disappearing. As their habitats recede on a warming planet, some of these beasts face imminent extinction.
Margot Raggett’s inspiration for producing the new photographic book, Remembering Bears, came upon seeing an image of a starving polar bear,
suffering from the effects of reducing sea ice.
She says that polar bears are among the species that are more visibly and immediately affected by climate change. As sea ice melts, their habitat is disappearing and they have reduced hunting time.
This lone polar bear, captured in that disappearing environment, was photographed by Marsel van Oosten.
An American black bear photographed by Daisy Gilardini
A sloth bear photographed by Tristan Dicks.
Grizzly brown bear photographed by Andy Skinner
though based in Melbourne, Australia, Joshua Holko specialises in polar photography and has spent many years capturing images of wildlife in the Arctic. He caught these polar bears, one of whom appears to be playing at being bashful, in Monbukta, Svalbard, in winter 2017
Charlie Hamilton James’s “wild West stand-off” garnered a nod as a Wildlife Photographer of the Year finalist. He caught this brown bear in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA, using a camera trap at a spot where park rangers deliberately leave carcasses to keep the bears away from the road. The photo was found by sifting through some 200 000 images.
Photographer Kyriakos Kaziras has devoted extended periods to capturing intimate and lovingly framed portraits of polar bears. This one, which he calls “Midnight Melody”, was taken in Svalbard on a cold, windless night at 11.30pm. ‘The sea was smooth like a mirror with the perfect reflection of the bear with her two cubs,’ he says
This article was originally published in the January 2023 issue of Getaway Magazine
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